Thank you all so much, I was not expecting so many helpful responses. Really appreciate your responses. We are glad we found this forum to fall back on when we have some concerns about our move to UK.
~snip~
@Nan D. and @KFdancer could you please tell me how service can depend on postcode? If i stay in Kingston (thats where we are planning to stay) can i not visit NHS in Kent for eg?
Thanks all again!
Well, there's this: When I was in Glasgow, if I wanted medical help I would phone to make an appointment with my GP in the given phone-in hours every morning. (This was pre-pandemic. During the pandemic the doctors offices all closed.) Once in to see the GP, which could take a wait of several days, but not usually a terribly long time, any referrals to specialists could take months. (Chest pains. Yep. Close to two months. And that was after being flagged as "urgent".) If a prescription was to be written I would have to walk or take a cab home from the GP. Then walk (or take a cab) back to the GP the next day to get the paper prescription (which would not be written while I was there the first time) and walk/cab it to the pharmacy. Said pharmacy would then either dispense it if it was something like Naproxen that they had on the shelf, or - more likely - it would be sent to their main pharmacy where they did all the actual medication dispensing work, and then shipped back to my local pharmacy. Who I could call and then cab/walk to in about 48 hours if the prescription was ready. Then walk/cab back home. Not too great when you're really "poorly" at all.
I asked, and was told we should only be registered with a GP in our postcode. The first office refused to take us on their roster because we were both American and Irish, and not Scottish with a work history. They kept insisting that we had to have a work history or pay the requisite fee to the government as we were foreigners. In Scotland, if you live in the country with the intent that you will remain permanently, you are entitled to medical care regardless of your prior work history there. And, if memory serves (and it's getting fuzzy now), as EU, we should have not had to pay any more than a citizen paid for care. Things have, of course, changed with Brexit. I believe that' was never the case in England, where a fee was always required until you had the UK equivalent of a greencard or citizenship? Neither here nor there at this point for you, though! We were directed to the alternate GP by the Scottish government office that handles such things, and filed a formal complaint against the first office (who should have, we were told, at least taken us on as visitors, and who should have provided their refusal in writing, rather than refusing to accept our applications completely).
If the GP wanted any lab tests other than doing a urine dipstick or a finger stick to check for anemia, it involved an appointment at another NHS facility - that did involve a cab ride because when we were sick enough for testing, a three-mile-each-way walk was too much. They had no facility to process anything - even to send it out to a lab for processing - at the GP office. I think some other GPs in town may have at least had someone who could do a blood draw, but we could not use them.
And there is: If we had been in a different postal code, the available medications on the NHS might be different from what was available in our "home" postal code. Medication the daughter was able to get with no problems at all when living in a different postal code were denied to her by the GP in the one we lived in when we were both in the country. We never sorted out if it was just that the doctor didn't want to go over whatever quota for the medication that office had, or....? Same patient, same documented condition, same presentation for care. Very different outcomes in different postal codes. (I'm leaning toward thinking it was the clinic budget determining what she was prescribed.)
And there's this: If we were seriously ill, because of our postal code we would be sent to what we nicknamed "The Death Star" - a brand-new mega hospital that has had an unusually high death rate in children that was traced back to either the pigeon droppings in the air conditioning system or the bacteria in the water system, and then hushed up. That there were pigeon droppings or problems with the water in a HOSPITAL was horrifying enough, but in a
brand new facility it was exponentially more off-putting. And then the cover-up, well that's par for the course in the NHS, it seems. Sadly. If we were in the next postal code over, we would have been sent to a different, much older but ecologically sound facility. (I did ask and was told it was not an option because of my address.) No bird poop, no toxic water over there....
I never sorted ambulances out. I don't think the NHS runs them. But it can take literally hours for one to show up - even if you're laying in the street with a gaping head wound spurting blood. Not always, but that sort of thing happened often enough while we were there that we discussed contingency plans if we ever needed for one of us to get emergency care.
You do have to remember that the NHS in Scotland is a different organization than the NHS in England, Wales, or NI.
If you can afford it, go private. Seriously.
